Robert Adams - The Witch Goddess

But Dr. Braun and some others of the wounded were suffering from the long, hard march, and that suffering was clearly weakening them; so Gumpner and the two men he bad sent out ahead, on point, were on constant lookout for a safe campsite. The party would have to halt, he knew, and soon.

At length, one of the point riders came back to guide them into a tightly twisting defile, barely wide enough along most of its length for even a single rider and steeply rising, with a couple or three inches of clear, running water filling it from wall to wall. At the top of the incline, Gumpner found himself on a tiny, grassy plateau. A spring-fed pool at its center was the genesis of the stream that flowed down through the steep gap.

With the eye of military experience, Gumpner surveyed the location. If there were no more ways to get up to it, save the way he had come, he and his group should certainly be safe there for the couple of days it would take the mounts to exhaust the available forage. As high as the place was, fires would probably not be easily visible by night, especially on bright nights like that just past. And, if it came to that, two or three men would be able to hold that difficult defile against any conceivable number of the primitive Ganiks.

Nonetheless, cautious in every detail, as Major Corbett had taught him to be, Gumpner shepherded the column into the defile, through the thicket of stunted holly trees which hid the opening, then he, Sergeant Cabell and two other men carefully erased all visible sign of their passage, trying to give the appearance that the group had continued south, down the track.

That was precisely what the thirty-seven Ganiks, led by Bully Johnny Skinhead, Long Willy’s eldest lieutenant, assumed when, some three hours later, they passed the clump of holly and splashed through the stream that cut across the track. Due to the fact that they had utilized shorter, though more difficult, cross-country routes rather than the main track, they would have come up to Gumpner’s party a good hour before he had lucked onto his little hideaway had they not come across the body of Jim-Beau and stopped then and there for a meal.

Old Johnny was discouraged. That they had not caught their human quarry by this juncture meant, to his mind, that they likely would not ever catch them; for although his horse—lifted from a Kuhmbuhluhner steading, like most similar horses—seemed to be holding up well, few of the ponies were; some of the small equines were, indeed, tottering along, and there was no easy way to replace them. Not even the couple of hours of rest, while their riders had butchered and cooked and eaten the fresh-killed body of a strange Ganik, had done much toward restoring the fast-ebbing vitality of the ponies.

Getting fresh ponies up north was seldom a problem. Not only were there many Ganik farm families from whom ponies could be obtained by trade or force, but there were usually strays from the various Ganik bunches roaming the hills and valleys in ones or twos or small herds.

But as far as Johnny Skinhead knew, there were no Ganik farmers this far south, and, of bunches, Long Willy’s was the most southerly of all. Nor had he seen any traces of equines since they had left, other than along this track.

Bully Johnny did not ride on much farther, for at the same time the trail petered out, no less than three of the drooping ponies saw fit to collapse, their prominent rib cages working like bellows, jerkings and kickings and cursing availing nothing toward getting them back onto their hooves.

“Piss awn it!” announced Johnny Skinhead. “Them strangers mos’ prob’ly cut ovuh the ridges fer to hit the main track; I would, wuz I them—it ain’ nowheres near’s rough nor thisun be. And these here ponies wouldn’ mek a hunnert yards up thet firs’ ridge, by Plooshuhn. They may not evun mek it back up to wher we kin figger awn gittin’ sumore.”

“Long Willy, he ain’ gon like us jes’ comin’ back, th’out ketchin’ us summa them stranguhs,” muttered one.

“You jes’ let me do any worryin’ ‘bout mah boy Long Willy, Eskuh,” snapped old Johnny peevishly. “Him an’ me, we got us more brains in owuh peckers, nor you’ll evuh hev in your haid!”

Bully Johnny Skinhead’s very close relationship to the leader of the bunch would have been considered both most singular and shameful in the extreme among races of normal folk, although it was less than an unusual one among the Ganiks. He was Long Willy’s father, but as he had gotten this son—as well as at least two other children—on Crosseyed Kate, his own mother, old Johnny was also Long Willy’s half brother.

Some years back, old Johnny, one of his more natural brothers and Long Willy had returned from a raiding sojourn with Buhbuh the Kleesahk’s huge bunch to find that during their absence, some other bunch had visited their family steading, killed and eaten or taken away all of their kin and driven off the livestock, then partially burned the buildings.

If not for that latter fact, the three men might have continued to live there between raids, eventually stealing a few women to get brats on and to do the heavy work of farming, but with matters as they had been, the three had simply turned their ponies’ heads about and taken up full-time residence with the bunches, finally being included in a few hundred sent by Buhbuh to form a southern bunch.

Then, five years ago, when Long Willy had attained to his full growth, he had challenged, fought and killed the biggest of the then-leader’s bullies—which was one way of becoming a bully himself. A few weeks later, he had called out and slain the leader, Horsecock Coates, then the one other bully unwise enough to indicate his antipathy toward this new leadership.

Few of the original leader’s pack of bullies were still around, after five years. Old Johnny had killed one in order to take his place, and his other brother—he who had held the muzzle of the captured loaded rifle to his belly while holding a torch to its breech and chamber—had emulated Johnny’s murderous actions. One-ear Carson had died at the defile, and now the only bully not of Long Willy’s choosing was Strong Tom Amory.

Back in the Ganik camp, Strong Tom lay as one dead for hours after Long Willy had clubbed him senseless. At length, i the massive man commenced to whimper, then to moan, and, with immense effort, finally got back onto his feet. He stood, swaying, however, and pitched back down on his face at the first step he essayed. At the end, sobbing noisily like a whipped child, the bully crawled on hands and knees across the camp to his hut.

Far to the south and east of that camp, old Johnny Skinhead and his men left the dying ponies where they lay, after stripping off their gear, and led the party back up the track to that place he recalled where a shallow streamlet crossed it. He had decided that they would camp there for the night and rest the ponies before setting out for camp on the morrow.

But even before they traveled that relatively short distance, more ponies became unable to bear their riders, so that when they arrived at the projected campsite, some dozen of his Ganiks were trotting along afoot, while a handful of nearly foundered ponies trailed along far behind.

Corbett had pushed his command hard along the clear track, allowing only short rest periods for man or beast. They found the place where Jim-Beau’s body had been butchered and eaten, but between the thirty-seven cannibals and the no less voracious wildlife, not enough remained to give them even a clue as to the being’s identity, other than that it had been human.

.Slightly relieved that the feast site indicated no trace of having been also a battleground, Corbett and his force pressed relentlessly on southward, down the hoof-scarred track. The larger, deeper impressions of the bigger, steel-shod mounts of Gumpner’s group were everywhere overlaid by the smaller, shallower, but far more numerous ones of the Ganiks’ unshod little ponies. And, ominously, the former seemed barely older than the latter.